Abstract
The Purpose of this study was to examine effectsof group discussion of a medical problem on the comprehension of a subsequentproblem-relevant text by first year medical students.
Forty-eight first-year medical students were randomly assigned toone of two conditions: The experimental group discussed a problem of blood pressureregulation, where the control group discussed a problem of vision. Subsequently, allstudents studied a text on the physiology of blood pressure regulation. Finally, a freerecall test was administered. Numbers of propositions accurately recalled were analyzed usinganalysis of variance (ANOVA). Students who discussed the blood pressure regulationproblem recalled 25% more from the text than those who discussed the control problem.This difference was statistically significant. The present study represented thefirst truly randomized trial in the ecologically valid context of a medical curriculum. Itdemonstrated the positive effects of problem-based tutorial group discussion on thecomprehension of text. It confirmed earlier findings from laboratory studies thatproblem-based learning, in addition to positive emotional and motivational long-term effectswell-documented in the literature, also has positive effects on learning.
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de Grave, W.S., Schmidt, H.G. & Boshuizen, H.P. Effects of problem-based discussion on studying a subsequent text: A randomized trial among first year medical students. Instructional Science 29, 33–44 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026571615672
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026571615672